White and blue are the colors of the Bavarian
flag. It is said that they reflect the clear, transparent
skies, sprinkled with some white clouds, on a summer day
in this German state, as it is shown on the
typical tourist postcards.

I was born in Munich, the capital
of Bavaria, on June 11, 1971 as the first of
two brothers in a Catholic family. The reality of Bavaria
now, however, is not as picture perfect as it appears.
Although it used to be a region whose culture was
permeated by the Catholic faith, the influence of secularism did
not spare it, even more in the city than in
the countryside.

This reality took its toll on my faith,
too. My understanding and experience of my Catholic faith as
a living reality did not grow at the same pace
as the other areas of my education. It didn’t even
help much that the parish church was almost next door
to my house. On Sundays, I attended Mass as I
had learned from my parents, but during the rest of
the week, I did not give much thought to the
fact that the Lord was there. This was symptomatic of
the division in my life, which grew more and more
as I became older, even though I did not notice
it. In a large part of my life, God did
not play any role, even though there still was some
consciousness and some unrest in my interior because I often
felt that there had to be more to life than
just studies and some diversions and the search for pleasure
on the weekends.

In this environment, I finished high school. I
did not hesitate long before deciding to pursue a career
in mechanical engineering and registering at the University of Technology
in Munich. Probably God had already called me to the
priesthood during those years, but I was in no way
open to perceive his calling. I remember that I had
some isolated thoughts about becoming a priest, but I quickly
left them aside by saying to myself that they were
only due to momentary frustrations with my studies. A few
people had asked me why I had not entered the
seminary, but surprisingly enough, these questions did not come from
people with a religious background who would have seriously wanted
to help me find my vocation. Rather, they came from
people who had little to do with the Church and
who probably considered it already something extraordinary that I went
to Mass every Sunday.

My studies at the university in Munich
were hard and absorbed almost all of my time, but
I had success in them and I found them very
interesting. I seemed to have found my way there. Although
I soon concentrated my interest on more theoretical questions of
basic science, I also profited a lot from the required
practical training. I applied successfully to one of the few
summer training positions for university engineering students at Germany’s largest

Fr Tobias with Fr Sylvester Heereman in Bamberg, Germany, during the Pentecost Mass in the 2008 Youth and Family Encounter.

aerospace company (now part of the company European Aerospace and
Defense Systems). There I learned more about many interesting programs,
from the production of rocket engines for the European “Ariane”
rocket to the assembly of helicopter engine systems.

Altogether, I
studied for four years in Munich. But as the years
went on, my inner dissatisfaction grew. My success in my
studies had not brought the desired fulfillment. An idea grew
in me that I had to change something with my
life, but I still only thought in worldly categories. So
I made up my mind to study abroad, at least
for a year. This seemed attractive to enhance my career
opportunities, but even more importantly, I hoped to have a
new start in life in a new environment. The United
States of America was my preferred destination, and in particular
the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. I
also applied to some other universities, however, because I was
by no means sure that Caltech would accept me. But
the research opportunities at Caltech corresponded particularly well to my
interests.

It took a lot of effort for me to understand
the American university system and to put together the application
material with the required standardized test scores and letters of
recommendation. But after more than a year of preparation, I
had the admission letter from Caltech in my hands. Thanks
to scholarships I had obtained before from the Bavarian state
and the German federal government, together with the income from
some paid research work I had done for institutes at
the university in Munich, the financing for the first year
was assured.

California Dreaming

On a summer day of 1995, I arrived
at the Caltech campus. It was a moment I had
dreamt of during all the time of preparation. The first
days were rather difficult, since I arrived on a Friday
evening, when all the university offices were already closed, and
there was nobody to receive me. So it was very
helpful for me to come across the schedule of a
Sunday Mass on campus in a Caltech information brochure with
the listing of all the student clubs. When I came
to the designated place, I found a small group of
students and other participants who had already gathered for Mass
and who warmly welcomed me as a new member of
the Caltech community.

When the priest arrived, I was really
impressed, not only by his exterior with the Roman collar,
which made him clearly recognizable as a priest, and which
I had never seen used by a priest in Germany,
but above all by the friendliness and serenity with which
he treated everybody. Only later did I learn that the
priest, Father Brian Wilson, belonged to a congregation called the
Legionaries of Christ, which I had never heard of before.
Although I do not remember any particulars of that Mass,
I recall how impressed I was by the profound recollection
with which Father Brian celebrated the Mass. In this way,
he gave it the dignity it deserved, even though the
surroundings were rather plain, since we did not have a
chapel on campus. So I happily returned every Sunday for
Mass, and probably because of my German punctuality, I was
soon put in charge of the “sacristy,” which meant preparing
the sacred vessels and putting together the wooden altar, which
was stored in three pieces during the week.

But during the
rest of the week, I continued living rather far from
God. I soon found out that the studies at Caltech
were very interesting, as I had hoped, but in the
end the change of location did not bring about the
desired change in my life. A question remained in my
mind: for what end was I living with all the
pressure to perform well on the exams and comply with
all the other requirements of the studies? Success in my
academic work at Caltech was still not enough to give
meaning to my life.

Still, for the moment I saw no
other way than to stay at Caltech and I was
happy when at the end of my first year, after
successfully completing the Master’s degree, I was offered a position
with financial support which allowed me to pursue studies for
a doctorate. My thesis project, on which I now began
to work, had to do with the numerical simulation of
nonlinear, turbulent flows on the computer. It was a rather
theoretical topic, but that was what I preferred. Since it
was part of a large United States government program, the
research conditions were excellent, and I had access to some
of the largest computers existing at that time in the
world. One of them was called “Blue Nirvana” and so
I found myself spending many hours in the Nirvana, but
fortunately only in this virtual version, which consisted of thousands
of lines of computer code and gigabytes of numbers, which
were the result of all these efforts.

So my doctorate,
on which I worked from 1996 to 2000, made good
progress, although it meant many hours of tiring work. But
even the prospect of a scientific career did not make
me feel better about my future, and the obstacles in
my daily life, which brought me further away from God,
were growing at this time.

Freedom at Last

This only changed when
a fellow student at Caltech, who had consecrated his life
to God in the Opus Dei prelature, undertook the effort
of leading me to a new discovery of the Catholic
faith. Thus I experienced that the meaning of true friendship
is seeking the best for the other person, and this
experience helped me a lot to understand what it means
that Jesus Christ wants to be my best friend. This
friend persisted in inviting me kindly first to daily Mass
and to some moments of prayer, then also to the
center where he lived with two priests and other consecrated
members. When I finally gave in and got to know
this community, they gave me a great example of offering
up their daily work and seeking to win others for
Christ. Above all, I became convinced of their authenticity by
their joy and their charity, which I immediately experienced as
I visited their house for the first time. Only then
did I begin to understand what it really means to
live as a Christian.

This friend of mine also gave
me the push I needed to make a good confession
after a long time without frequenting this sacrament. With this,
my life really changed. After I had received absolution after
such a long time, I experienced great interior peace and
also a deep conviction that from now on, with the
grace of God, I would lead a life no longer
in contradiction to my baptism, but corresponding to the love
of Christ which I had experienced. Everything in the Catholic
faith now seemed to make sense to me: the sacraments
of the Eucharist and Confession, whose frequent reception would give
me the graces to persevere in these resolutions, the daily
prayers, to which I became accustomed, and which kept me
in contact with God as the fountain of my new
life, and the wish to share this joy with others.

In
this way, Christ became ever more the real center of
my life. Because of this, the thought emerged that I
could consecrate my life completely to him. At first, I
had no clear idea where and how this could be,
although I already felt a strong attraction to the priesthood.
Therefore, it never really came to my mind to think
of consecrating my life to God in Opus Dei, whose
charism is mainly to sanctify oneself and others through ordinary
work. On the other hand, I also thought that, after
the life I had led so far, I was completely
unworthy of receiving such a great gift as the priesthood.
At first, therefore, I did not pay much attention to
these thoughts and did not talk about them with anybody.
Rather, I tried to live my daily life of work
at the university as a Christian.

In addition, I looked
for opportunities to do some active apostolate. First, I participated
in a Caltech volunteer program, where my task was to
help children in an underprivileged neighborhood of Pasadena with their
mathematics assignments. But I was looking for something where I
could work more directly for the Church and was glad
to be invited to help at least in a small
way with the Opus Dei youth activities, accompanying the children
and giving moral and spiritual orientation to some of them.
Later on, I could also help more actively in the
Newman Center of Caltech, run by the Legionaries of Christ.

In the year 2000, Father Andrew Mulcahey, L.C., became the
new chaplain for Caltech. Through him, I was even nominated
to receive an award from the diocese of Los Angeles
for my aid in the campus ministry. Although this was
more due to the fact that the other students helped
even less than me in the Newman Center activities, this
rather curious event also helped to promote our activities and
foster our ties with the diocese and the local parish,
St. Philip the Apostle, where I liked to attend the
weekday Mass every morning. One morning, the parish priest came
up to me after Mass and showed me the diocesan
newspaper, which had an article about the awards ceremony with
a photo of all the students who had received an
award, including me. The priest was happy that his parish
was mentioned, since in the nomination for the award, Father
Andrew had written that I belonged to this parish and
attended Mass there every weekday. Even more, in the nomination
he had also said that I was thinking of becoming
a priest. Since it was read publicly in the little
awards ceremony, it also served to give testimony of the
vocation to the priesthood, and some of the attending diocesan
priests and students from other universities commented positively about my
plans.

At that time, I had already begun to think more
explicitly about a religious vocation because I was finishing my
thesis work and had to think about the time afterwards.
In the year 2000, I was awarded the doctorate. On
the diploma, the old motto of Caltech appeared: “The truth
shall set you free”. This Gospel quote had become true
for me in a very special way: God had led
me to Caltech to find people who helped me discover
my faith and come back to Christ, in whom I
had found true freedom. Even more, in the time there
I had become open to his call to religious life
and the priesthood.

“Master, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life”

The impulse of taking the step
to actively discern such a vocation came after I read
the book “The First Jesuits” about Saint Ignatius of Loyola
and the foundation of the Society of Jesus. The example
of this great saint convinced me that it was worth
every effort to find out if God in his mysterious
plan of salvation could call even someone like me to
the priesthood and to religious life. The most obvious thing
would have been to go to the Legionary priests who
had known me for the longest time, and talk to
them about this. But at that time, I did not
see things that clearly.

Another factor was that I had
had very little familiarity with the newer movements and congregations
in the Church before coming to the United States. Because
of this, I first looked to the older religious orders
which I had known, at least by name, already from
Germany. I found very good priests there, who helped me
advance in my prayer life and grow in the confidence
that God had called me to the priesthood. I was
even ready to enter the novitiate of one of these
religious orders, but after a long wait the provincial superior
told me that even though he saw in me a
possible vocation to the priesthood and even to his order,
he considered it better for me to wait before entering
the novitiate. At that time, I did not understand this
decision, and at first it was a big shock for
me.

Fortunately already before the decision came, I had made
up the resolution to take it to Christ in the
Eucharist, no matter what it would be. So after the
phone call in which I learned about the decision, the
first thing I did was to go to the parish
church, which was only a few blocks away. The Eucharist
was reserved there in a beautiful side chapel; in one
of the stained glass windows, the scene of Jesus with
his disciples after his Eucharistic discourse was depicted; at the
bottom, there were written the words of Saint Peter: “Master,
to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life” (Jn 6, 68). There, before the Eucharist, I
renewed my decision not to let myself be separated again
from Christ, but to persevere in any case, with the
help of his grace, in a life close to him,
through the sacraments and regular prayer.

At first, after the disappointing
response I had received, I thought that I had to
give up the thought of a religious vocation altogether and
continue with my scientific career, even though it did not
seem very attractive to me anymore. Through my contact with
Christ, the attraction of following him more closely never went
away completely and soon became stronger again. I realized, therefore,
that I had to continue looking for the right way
to carry out the vocation God had in mind for
me.

Finally, by closing other doors, God led me to
the place where I was supposed to be, as I
soon found out. At that time, I did not know
what to do anymore, and so I went back to
the Legionary priests, who had always supported me when they
had heard about my vocational plans, even though at first
I had told them only that I was interested in
another religious order. They continued supporting me now and helped
me to get to know the Legion of Christ. Soon
I realized that this was the place I had always
been looking for. This conviction was only confirmed when I
visited the Legionaries’ Center for Higher Studies and the Regina
Apostolorum in Rome on the occasion of a pilgrimage organized
by the Legion for young men from the United States
at the end of the Jubilee Year 2000 for the
60th anniversary of the Legion’s foundation. On that occasion, in
Rome, I also decided to become a member of Regnum
Christi, a step which came very naturally after I had
already been receiving regular spiritual direction from Father Andrew and
had been helping in the apostolate of the Newman Center.

“Whoever
loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt
10, 39)

Finally, in the summer of 2001, I was ready
to enter the Legion’s summer program for vocational discernment, which
took me first to San Diego and then to the
Legion’s novitiate in Cheshire, Connecticut. In general, I felt at
home immediately, but after my past experiences I still had
some doubts about whether I was going to be accepted,
especially because I was one of the oldest candidates. But
at the end of the summer program, all my fears
proved to be unnecessary since I was told that I
had been accepted to the novitiate, and that I would
go back to Germany to do it there.

In September
of 2001, I arrived in Bad Münstereifel, a small town
in a beautiful, hilly countryside about one hour south of
Cologne. There I received my Legionary cassock and spent my
two years of novitiate. The life of prayer, work and
study, together with the necessary recreational hikes in the beautiful
surroundings, did not cause me difficulties at all. But little
by little I found out that I still had to
learn a lot because I was still missing the most
important thing if I was to follow Christ in this
vocation: I had to learn to forget myself in order
to gain Christ. Until then, even in the discernment of
my vocation, I had thought a lot about myself and
what would be good for me, but now I had
to learn that following Christ meant thinking about him and
others, and that only if I made this true in
my life would I be able to come to the
fullness of life which God wanted for me with this
vocation.

After the two years of novitiate, I was admitted
to the profession of the first religious vows on the
feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14,
2003. After that, I stayed in Rome to begin philosophy
studies at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum College. After the first
semester, I had discovered a great interest in that discipline
and saw myself already as a great philosopher. In reality,
this conception of myself was rather ridiculous, and God had
to show me again that his ways are different than
what I thought. Because of the strong growth of the
Legion, help was needed in the apostolate in Germany, and
so I had to combine my studies with trips back
to Germany to contribute something, even with menial tasks, to
the work of the Legion there. At the beginning, this
was difficult for me because I could not study as
much as I wanted to, but afterwards I realized that
what really counted was not splendid success in studies, but
doing God’s will. Even from the human point of view,
I could see the many advantages God had given me
by this: the possibility to gain interesting apostolic experiences, the
opportunity to do something to help my brothers, etc.

When
I had completed the bachelor’s degree in philosophy, I began
right away with my theology studies, which opened up to
me a much wider view than philosophy had given me
before. Of course, I also learned to appreciate even more
the preparation which the first two years of studies in
Rome had given me. With the theology studies, I also
came very close to the immediate preparation for the priesthood.
The three years of theology passed very rapidly and the
moment of the ordination to the diaconate came. The spiritual
exercises before ordination, however, confirmed me in the conviction that
God was there in all the moments of my life
to give me the fullness of life he wanted for
me. I had only to let him guide me.

Father Tobias
Völkl was born in Munich, Germany, on June 11, 1971.
He graduated from high school in 1990 at the Karlsgymnasium
in Munich. After one year of military service he studied
mechanical and aeronautical engineering for four years at the Technische
Universität in Munich. Then he continued his studies at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where he obtained
a Master’s degree in Aeronautics in 1996 and the doctorate
(Ph.D. in Aeronautics) in 2000. Afterwards, he worked for one
year as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of
Technology before entering the novitiate of the Legionaries of Christ
in Bad Münstereifel, Germany, in September 2001. His formation continued
with studies in philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Regina
Apostolorum College in Rome, where he obtained the Bachelor’s degree
in philosophy in 2005 and in theology in 2008. Currently
he is continuing his studies there to obtain his licentiate
in theology.